20 December 2001
A man wielding a tomahawk smashed a display case at the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa, last night and fled with an historic sword which belonged to Ngati Toa chief Te Rauparaha. Several people called the central police communications centre from mobile phones reporting the theft shortly after 5pm. One caller said, "a man's going crazy in Te Papa with a knife". Police swamped the area and a member of the Diplomatic Protection Squad - closest to the action - arrested a 29-year-old man and recovered the sword and scabbard, which is on loan to Te Papa from the Carkeek family of Otaki. The sword's display case is in the fourth floor's Mana Whenua exhibition. Museum security was at the scene within minutes. A police spokesman said the theft was well orchestrated, with the offender setting off the museum fire alarm and waiting for the floor to be evacuated. Te Rauparaha, a Treaty of Waitangi signatory, played a key role in Ngati Toa's migration to Kapiti Coast in the 1820s, spreading the tribe's dominance to the top of the South Island. Governor George Grey presented the United States Army sword to Te Rauparaha in Auckland in 1846. On his return to Otaki in 1848, Te Rauparaha is said to have thrust the sword at the feet of the Ngati Wehiwehi chief Paora Pohotiraha, declaring, "Come, take up this weapon! I no longer seek honour on earth, but seek honour in heaven. Build us a church!" Paora took up the sword and the challenge to support the building of Rangiatea. It remained in the family till 1904 when it was presented to Heni Te Rei, the daughter of Matene te Whiwhi. Descendant Tana Carkeek, of Otaki, told The Evening Post today he was disappointed someone could get to the sword. He was pleased, however, it was recovered so quickly. Te Papa communications manager Paul Brewer said the incident was regrettable. The alleged offender, of no fixed abode, has been charged with possession of an offensive weapon, false activation of an alarm, possession of a knife in a public place and theft. He was expected to appear in Wellington District Court today. http://www.stuff.co.nz/
Penn. Antiques Dealer Pleads Guilty
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - An antiques dealer pleaded guilty Friday to staging phony appraisals of Civil War-era artifacts on the PBS program ``Antiques Roadshow.'' Russell Pritchard III, 38, of Bryn Mawr, also pleaded guilty to stealing a uniform from a Civil War museum in Harrisburg, Pa., where he worked, and defrauding Civil War collectors by giving them low appraisals on artifacts, then reselling them at much higher prices. In one case, Pritchard and his business partner, George Juno, bought military antiques from the family of Confederate Gen. George Pickett for $87,000, then sold them to the Harrisburg museum for $870,000, prosecutors said. ``Antiques Roadshow,'' produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, has people bring in their old or unusual items and get on-the-spot appraisals. Often, people are surprised to learn that their item is extremely valuable. In a segment shown in 1997, Pritchard and Juno staged an appraisal in which a man who claimed to have found a Civil War sword in his attic was told that the weapon was worth $35,000. WGBH said Pritchard and Juno knew the man beforehand and had arranged for him to bring the sword onto the show. Prosecutors said Pritchard and Juno staged the appraisal to get publicity and attract customers. Juno pleaded guilty to similar charges in May. Pritchard could get as many as 135 years in prison and $5.3 million in fines at sentencing in April.
Liberty Island Reopens in New York Harbor
By Jeffrey Benkoe
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Liberty Island, the site of one of the most enduring symbols of American freedom, the Statue of Liberty, reopened to tourists on Thursday, 100 days after the Sept. 11 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. While boatloads of visitors were allowed on the Island, across the harbor from where the twin towers once stood, the 151-foot Statue of Liberty remained closed. The Ellis Island Immigration Museum also reopened to tourists. More than 15 million immigrants were processed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924, the period of its greatest activity, although the facility continued to function until 1954. ``That statue represents what America stands for: freedom and opportunity,'' said Kristi Ariaz, a 22-year-old kindergarten teacher in New York for her honeymoon. ``It's kind of emotional being out here when it reopens.'' Park service officials remained worried about security at the statue. ``We still have some security issues within the statue proper,'' said Brian Feeney, a spokesman for the National Park Service. He said there had been no specific threats to the statue since Sept 11. After the attacks that killed about 3,200 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the park service closed the statue and major national monuments in Washington, including the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The Statue of Liberty will be the last major site to reopen, Feeney said. The statue will be opened in phases. The granite pedestal will come next, followed by the seven-spiked crown, both sometime next year, although Feeney declined to give a timetable. Visitors on Thursday were put through an X-ray machine and a metal detector at the entrance of a long white tent that led to the ferry landing in lower Manhattan, about a half-mile from the site of the trade center destruction. Feeney said the security was not as tight as at airports. ''We're not screening for anything legal, like a nail file,'' he said. Crowds were light on Thursday morning. About 150 people boarded the first ferry, which had a capacity of 799, at 9 a.m. EST. December is among the slowest months for visitors to the statue and Ellis Island, while the summer months are the busiest, according to Feeney. The sites receive about 4 million visitors annually. By noon, with frigid winds whipping through Battery Park and low-lying clouds framing the statue, about 400 people had assembled for the next ferry. Mario Ariaz, who was married five days ago, was in New York with his wife, Kristi, for their honeymoon. The Fresno, California, couple, among the first to board the 9 a.m. ferry, said the visit to the statue was an emotional one. ``We visited ground zero before we came here,'' said Mario Ariaz, a 25-year-old computer network administrator. ``You just can't imagine that destruction. It's unbelievable.'' Souvenir vendors sold ministatues, hats with New York Police Department logos, and T-shirts with a montage of the Twin Towers, the statue and the Empire State Building. ``It's been slow,'' said vendor Angel Ayala, 24, as a tourist bought a statue key chain. Ayala, who emigrated from El Salvador five years ago, and the other vendors returned to Battery Park about a month after the attacks. A present from the people of France in 1886, the copper statue at the entrance to New York Harbor greeted hordes of newly arriving immigrants to the United States.
South Florida Landmark Damaged By Fire
Cleanup continues at a South Florida landmark scorched by fire.
An electrical fire was contained to a small part of the historic Miami Springs pharmacy on Curtis Parkway. However smoke and water damage to the first floor of the building is extensive. The pharmacy has been run by the Stadnik family since 1946. The second floor of the building is home to the Miami Springs museum which only suffered minor damage. "It's just devastating," the owner's daughter, Carol Stadnik, said. The family will be moving the pharmacy to another building across the street so they can continue to fill prescriptions. They are fully insured and say they will rebuild.
Ancient Buddhist treasures emerge Central Asia
Angela Charlton (AP) Termez, December 21
Surrounded by war, political volatility and hostile governments, archaeologists from around the world are painstakingly rediscovering one of Buddhism's richest civilizations under the forbidding landscape of Central Asia. What in the 1st-7th centuries was the Kushan Buddhist empire and a crucial East-West crossroads, in a land then known as Bactria, is now part of at least four countries: Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. No major foreign archaeological team has ventured into Afghanistan for more than 20 years because of war. The Taliban infuriated historians worldwide earlier this year by detonating two towering statues of Buddha hewn from a cliff-face near Bamiyan in the 3rd and 5th centuries, calling them unnecessary for the strict Islamic state. Even now that US airstrikes have helped rout the Taliban, continued banditry mean it could be a long time before serious research resumes. Tajikistan's chronic instability and Turkmenistan's restrictive regime mean scholars of the region's Buddhist era are pinning hopes on Uzbekistan, also a largely Muslim state but one with a secular government keen to distance itself from Islamic intolerance. "While the Taliban were destroying their heritage, the Uzbeks are conserving theirs," said Barry Lane, director of the Uzbek office of UNESCO, the U.N. cultural heritage agency. Long before Islam arrived in Central Asia, hundreds of Buddhist monks once prayed in solitary mud brick chambers built into barren slopes. On festival days, columned temples lined with frescoes of crimson-robed hunters spilled with spectators. Nearly 2,000 years later, Uzbek border guards pace the blistered earth, past spiked and electrified fences and huge, scoop-like radar complexes aimed at Afghanistan, just across the Amu Darya river. Where they can do their work safely, archaeologists from Japan, France and elsewhere are burrowing deeply into the clay, unearthing Buddha statuettes encased under remnants of centuries of Muslim life. Today's borders make the work "awkward and incomplete," says Tukhtash Annayev, a prominent historian and archaeologist in the Uzbek port of Termez, which is separated from Afghanistan by the Amu Darya. Termez, today a stagnant, medium-sized city, was the Buddhist center of Central Asia during the Kushan empire's heyday. Historians say it played a key role in exporting Buddhism to Tibet and parts of China. Many Uzbeks would be surprised to hear that. On Muslim holidays, women in headscarves and men with long gray beards recite prayers before dusty cave entrances at the Hakim at-Termizi mausoleum complex near Termez, a shrine to a 9th- century Muslim ruler. Asked why, one woman replied simply, "It's our holy place." Yet the caves predate Uzbekistan's 1,200-year Islamic history, and are believed to have served as quarters for Kushan Buddhist monks. As Termez prepares to celebrate its 2,500th birthday this month, schools are starting to teach pupils about the region's pre-Muslim history, including its Buddhist era and the preceding centuries when it was populated by Alexander the Great's emissaries. The Museum of the History of the Uzbek People in the capital Tashkent boasts a display of Greek coins and column capitals next to Buddhist frescoes and statues. In next-door Tajikistan, civil war with Islamic extremists during much of the 1990s halted nearly all digs. Restoration is still under way on a 13-metre long, supine Buddha statue found in the 1960s. The "Buddha in Nirvana" statue, of barklike clay, rests in the capital's yet-to-open Museum of Antiquities, near chunks of carved limestone thirsting for money and skilled experts to make them exhibit-ready. The Tajik culture minister, meanwhile, was assassinated in September, stalling movement toward renewed excavation efforts. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan's digs have attracted global attention, especially since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union opened them wider to foreign researchers. A Japanese Buddhist sect, Soka Gakkai, and a Japanese artist have funded conservation efforts in Uzbekistan, according to the Japanese Embassy. French-led teams spend springtime flaking away chunks of dirt at the Kara-tepa monastery, which lies inside the Uzbek-Afghan border zone and therefore off-limits to nearly everyone. A few hundred meters (yards) away, just outside the border zone, a huge, stucco-covered stupa - a mound containing sacred Buddhist relics - marks the entrance of the Fayaz-tepa monastery. The site is devoid of any signs or markings, other than graffiti etched by border guards. Shards of ceramic objects poke up from the dust that Annayev estimates date back more than 1,000 years. UNESCO wants to use a dlrs 750,000 Japanese government grant to build a road connecting the two monasteries, shore up existing walls, install original column bases and murals, and build a museum and gift shop. "I think it's going to be a very interesting site for tourists from Japan and elsewhere," Lane said. "We want visitors to have some impression of what the original buildings looked like." Uzbekistan's government says it wants to restore the sites and attract tourists, but it is too poor to fund excavations and its laws still limit foreigners' movements. It's also unlikely to relax its Afghan border, in its drive to keep out militants, drug smugglers and refugees. Veterans of Soviet expeditions that uncovered many of these treasures miss the generous communist-era funding, but curse Soviet planners for destroying the historical site of Ayrtam with a road-and-rail bridge across the Amu Darya to support the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. UNESCO, meanwhile, is eager to revive excavations in Afghanistan and put an end to the peddling of antiquities there. "It may not be considered a priority at first," Lane said. "But recovery of cultural heritage is also very important to the reconstruction of the country and reconstruction of a national identity." http://www.hindustantimes.com/